First Woman To Be Elected To The FIFA Executive Committee

Burundi’s Lydia Nsekera today became the first woman elected to the executive board of soccer’s governing body, FIFA.

Since the inception of FIFA in 1904, history of 109 of existence devoid of women in the executive committee. Lydia Nsekera has broken a new ground and will no doubt go down in history as the first woman to be elected into the powerful executive committee, FIFA.

Nsekera, 45, polled 95 votes for the four-year term, ahead of Moya Dodd of Australia (70 votes) and Sonia Bien-Aime, an official from the Turks & Caicos Islands (38 votes), at FIFA’s Congress in Mauritius. Both Dodd and Bien-Aime will also join FIFA higher table as co-opted members, for a duration of one year.

This unprecedented action follows a proposal made by the FIFA President, Joseph Sepp Blatter; with support from the existing members of the FIFA Executive Committee to have more females in decision-making positions within football federation. The landmark election marks an important step in FIFA’s two-year reform process.

 

Nsekera, who last year became the first woman to be co-opted to the executive committee, has been head of the Burundi FA since 2004 and was a member of Fifa's organising committee for the 2008 and 2012 Olympic football tournaments.

Nsekera told BBC Sport: "I am very happy to be the first woman elected. It is important for Africa, it is important for Burundi, it is important for women. In the executive committee, we work as a team, but personally I will carry on working in order to have more women as coaches in grassroots football. I will push for more women to be elected and ask parents to let their daughters play football."